


blood money, blood money

by kendrasaunders



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Dark!Kate, F/M, Season 3 Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 11:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5246528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kendrasaunders/pseuds/kendrasaunders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>seth and kate have a confrontation of sorts. how much does "i love you" cost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	blood money, blood money

__  
Kids are still depressed when you dress them up  
Syrup is still syrup in a sippy cup 

\--

“You can’t let her out.”

Richie’s wounds are mostly healed, saved for the gash across his chest. That one’s pretty deep, and is taking its sweet time. 

Seth watches the wound knit itself back together. It’s better than the distant look in Richie’s eyes.

“I’m not an idiot, Richard. I saw what she did.”

“We’re lucky to have even knocked her out.” Santanico nurses a cut across her cheek, a broken nose. “You shouldn’t go down there.”

He spares her a huff. “Duly noted.”

“Seth.” She’s got such a damn serious voice. Everything’s fucking life and death with her. “You shouldn’t go see her. It’s not-”

“What?” he says. “Safe? How is it unsafe?”

Santanico just gives him one of those looks. “She’ll try to trick you.”

“And I’m just such an idiot that I’ll fall for it.”

“Well-”

“Both of you,” Richie says. Like there isn’t a sort of pain in his voice. “Just let him do what he wants. Okay? She’s not going to hurt him.”

“Whatever she says to you,” Santanico says. “It’s all deceit. She’s not what she seems.”

“Right,” Seth says. “And you’d know all about that, right?”

Richie frowns. “Hey-”

“She can stand up for her fucking self, Richard,” Seth says. “God. She’s not even your fucking girlfriend anymore."

“Don’t fucking take this out on me,” Richie warns. “Okay? I had nothing-”

“Don’t,” Seth says. “Okay? Spare me.”

Richie draws his lips into a line.

“I’ll tell her you said ‘hi,’” Seth says.

No one finds it funny.

 

\--

 

It’s exactly as dark in the dungeons as he remembers. Considerably less bloody, but the memory remains.

He hears her before he sees her. Soft murmuring. He can’t make anything out.

Think of something. Say something. “This a bad time?”

Perfect. Just perfect.

“Seth.”

She sounds like a dream. 

He breathes. “Kate.”

The cage is empty, save for her. It dwarfs her. An excess of steel for such a tiny girl.  She leans against the door, sticking her arms through the spaces in the bars.

There has to be a way to breach this. There has to be a way to talk to her. To address what’s happened.

She died. She undied. She’s trying to kill Richie.

Those are the bare bones of it.

The details color it differently. His mind tells him that this is ridiculous. That this is _Kate._ There’s no need for all of this. 

His gut tells him to run.

He ignores both sides of the equation. Negligence has always been his strong suit.

“What you did up there-” He pauses. The movement of his hand is a placeholder. “How did you do that?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“Did someone... Turn you? Are you a culebra now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So what the hell was that, Kate?”

The distance between them is the same it’s always been. A couple breaths away, a hair’s width past decent.

But there’s never been bars between them. And he’d never thought they’d be on her end.

“I’m scared,” she says, voice small. “I don’t know- I just wanted help, I don’t know what’s coming over me. I’m hearing things and seeing things and I’m so- I think there’s something wrong with me, Seth.”

He’s inclined to agree.

Still.

His hand finds hers. Muscle memory. She’s warm.

“You’re going to be okay. We’re gonna-”

“No,” she whispers. “No, Seth. You don’t understand. Santanico- She- She wants to hurt me, and Richie’s going to listen to her, and they’re not going to help me at all. They’re gonna kill me again, I don’t want to die again, Seth, please-”

“Hey.” He meets her gaze. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

A sniffle. “Let me out,” she says. “We can- We can go together. It’ll be you and me again. You liked that, right?”

“Yeah, Katie.” He traces spirals against the back of her hand. “I liked that.”

“I know you don’t want this life,” she says. “You’re not- You’re still human, Seth. Like me. You were right, you know.”

“Was I?”

“When you told me not to go after Scott. Getting mixed up in this was-” She shakes her head. “I should’ve just stayed with you. Where you could protect me.”

“Kate-”

“Please,” she says. “Just open the cage, and we’ll go. No one will get hurt. It’ll just be the two of us. Partners.”

He watches her lips. The word “partners.” The weight of it.

There’s a thin line between deception and a flat-out lie.

He squeezes her hand. “You don’t mean a word you’re saying, do you?”

The gentle line of her mouth bears upward. She’s grinning. Teeth and all. “Nope.”

 

He drops her hand. “Katie-”

“I figured I’d have gotten better at it,” she says, smoothing her hair. “Lying, I mean. I did live with you for three months.”

He takes a step back from the bars.

“Look at you,” she says. Nothing like before. “Are you hurt, Seth?”

He should walk away. He should turn on his heel and go. “No.”

“Nooo,” she mocks. “What the fuck did you think was going to happen, Seth? That you’d come down here and I’d be just so-” She gestures. “Overcome with my love for you that I’d just fall into your arms?”

Don’t. Don’t. “No.”

“At least Richard has the decency to be ashamed of what he did to me.” She grabs the bars with both hands. Vice grip. Bloody knuckles. “You think you’re innocent in this. You’re the whole reason this happened. You kidnapped me. You left me on the side of the road!”

“I know.”

“And now-” Eyes on him. On his body, on his form. “You come down here like you can fucking save me.”

He answers with silence.

Wrong. Incorrect. She presses herself against the door. “I’m the savior, Seth. I’m the light. And I’m going to save the fucking world.”

She’s just shy of delusional. Manic. “Okay, Kate.”

“Let me out,” she demands. “Just let me out, and I’ll let you live.”

Hands balled into fists. Stomach in knots. “I can’t do that.”

“Right,” she says. “Because you’re just Richie’s lackey.”

He finds himself smirking before he can think better of it. “Try harder, Katie-cakes,” he spits. “Richie’s lackey? Like I’ve never heard that before?”

A laugh. The unpleasant kind. The not-Kate kind. “Do you want a fight, Seth?” she asks. “Because you won’t win.”

He shuts his eyes. A long blink. A refusal to look her in the eye. “No, Kate. I don’t want to fight.”

“Because you’re in love with me.”

His breath doesn’t hitch. His heartbeat stays the same.

Steady.

“I’m not.”

He can feel her grinning. 

She was gone. She was _gone._

And this is what came back. “Now who’s bad at lying?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter, Kate,” he says, gaze snapping upwards. “It really couldn’t fucking matter less.”

“Always the pragmatist,” she says. “I can’t wait to see Richie’s version of this talk.”

“Stop.” 

“How did you manage to be the pathetic one?”

It’s her voice, and her words, and her face.

It’s Kate that hates him. He needs to get that down.

“Just lucky, I guess,” he says.

He remembers, with a photographic kind of accuracy, the way she used to smile. It doesn’t matter.

“When I kill Richard,” she says. “When I stake him through the heart, and watch him disintegrate. I want you to be there. I want you to feel it.”

“Cheap threat,” he says. “You can do better.”

“I don’t have to,” she says. “I’m not you. I don’t have to run circles to prove myself.”

“But you like taking easy shots, right?” he says. “This is evil Kate? A petty little girl?”

She leans her head against her arm. “You’re trying so hard.”

“My mistake,” he says. “I should’ve listened. Shouldn’t have bothered coming down.”

“Honestly,” Kate replies. “What a waste of time.”

“Your eyes are red, Katie,” he says. Like that will put perspective to it. Like it doesn’t terrify him. 

“You get used to it,” she says.

A beat.

He waits for a sign. Knows full well there won’t be one.

She rolls on her heels. “You know this can’t hold me forever.”

There is an overwhelming desire to touch her. Just her cheek. Anything. Just a test. 

“I know.”

She gives him a fond little smile. It’s almost- It isn’t. It never will be. “I did love you,” she says. “Before I died.”

A straight shot. He didn’t think her the type. “Nice one.”

The same look. The familiar one. “Thanks.”

He walks away.

 

(He is walking away, and he will never see her again.)

 

 

It’s kind of silly.

There was a moment, one month in. When he’d been trying, in vain, to teach her how to drive a stick shift.

It had been hours. Hours in a piece of shit car with the windows down.

The moment when she’d actually shifted gears correctly, and squealed like it was so damn exciting.

And there was the way she’d smiled at him. The light in her hair. 

He thinks, if he’s pinpointing it, then that would be the moment. The instant he fell.

It’s stupid. Even for him.

Good thing, though. She’ll never know.

 


End file.
